Isn't that the true. Theists are like children--not only do they ask why (which is a good thing), but they cannot accept 'I don't know'--they have to have an answer--any answer will do, even 'god' as the answer. But I can accept 'I don't know' very easily.

Isn't that the true. Theists are like children--not only do they ask why (which is a good thing), but they cannot accept 'I don't know'--they have to have an answer--any answer will do, even 'god' as the answer. But I can accept 'I don't know' very easily.

I don't know is always a good answer. And I don't know either, but then I don't hang my hat on the creation of the universe ... here/now is all I need.

Some people, at least according to Drew ... won't admit that naturalism (back to universal creation) isn't the same as naturalism (back to some reasonable time in the past).

Which creation ... the universal one? As far as here and now, some things require agency (creation implies instrumental cause). You can project backward from that .. and say that agency is always required (for some things). What Drew can't admit is that ... not everything requires agency (when mud slides down a hill, that doesn't require agency ... gravity does it, not the mud god), that universal creation (if that is even a thing) might be a thing that doesn't require agency (make a universe (not a simulation) and let us see if agency is required). Agency could come about ... after universal "creation". Based on my understanding .. agency did come about after universal "creation" ... which shouldn't be called "creation" at all, because it didn't require agency. Naturalism was opposed to animism (of paganism) before it was opposed to monotheism.

Doesn't matter to me, practically, or theologically, if the universe has always been here or not. Doesn't matter to me "if the universe hasn't always been here" ... did it require agency. That is something Drew is obsessed about. Applying agency to everything, is ancient pagan belief, that no leaf falls without a dryad doing it. That is animism. Or in the case of the NT, nothing happens without G-d doing it. Christianity is simplified paganism ... from 20,000 gods to one. In a manner of speaking, in pantheism (which I agree to) ... nothing could happen without G-d doing it ... but you have to believe in pantheism to conclude that.

There will never be evidence of anything beyond our observational bubble. So the most we can do is work with a logical starting point and see if it mathematically unfolds the universe we observe. Theory, prediction, test and compare with evidence. Rinse and repeat.

Well, that's not strictly true -- although it's not completely demonstrated yet. There is evidence in the CMB of You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login, for example, and a separate universe is about as 'beyond our observational bubble' as you could ask for. Even granting that this is not conclusive, we cannot rule out observable consequences of external events.

And you're not beginning with a logical starting point, you're starting with the conclusion you want and building a superstructure around it. All you're saying is, "We can't observe what happened before the Big Bang, so it could have been anything, so my idea is plausible."

And it's just not. It's "here there be dragons" writ large. We don't know what exists before or outside our universe -- or even if there is a 'before' or 'outside' -- and you're just projecting your own philosophy onto those areas and then hiding behind a near-complete lack of real data.

Which creation ... the universal one? As far as here and now, some things require agency (creation implies instrumental cause). You can project backward from that .. and say that agency is always required (for some things). What Drew can't admit is that ... not everything requires agency (when mud slides down a hill, that doesn't require agency ... gravity does it, not the mud god), that universal creation (if that is even a thing) might be a thing that doesn't require agency (make a universe (not a simulation) and let us see if agency is required). Agency could come about ... after universal "creation". Based on my understanding .. agency did come about after universal "creation" ... which shouldn't be called "creation" at all, because it didn't require agency. Naturalism was opposed to animism (of paganism) before it was opposed to monotheism.

Doesn't matter to me, practically, or theologically, if the universe has always been here or not. Doesn't matter to me "if the universe hasn't always been here" ... did it require agency. That is something Drew is obsessed about. Applying agency to everything, is ancient pagan belief, that no leaf falls without a dryad doing it. That is animism. Or in the case of the NT, nothing happens without G-d doing it. Christianity is simplified paganism ... from 20,000 gods to one. In a manner of speaking, in pantheism (which I agree to) ... nothing could happen without G-d doing it ... but you have to believe in pantheism to conclude that.

I was just curious about your meaning of agency.

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Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able?Then he is not omnipotent,Is he able but not willing?Then whence cometh evil?Is he neither able or willing?Then why call him god?

If you argue against theism, the belief we owe our existence to a transcendent personal being who intentionally designed the universe for life, regardless of how you articulate it whether you say the universe existed somehow for eternity past, came into existence uncaused out of nothing, was the result of some subset of the laws of physics we are familiar with, or some super set we are unfamiliar with, those alternatives would still amount to an unguided naturalistic explanation of our existence.

See? This is why I say that you really don't have the background to argue about the beginning of the universe. You have repeated a litany of distortions that I have never put forward. About the only thing you got right is the "unguided naturalistic explanation of our existence." And I ask, what's wrong with that? It's not as if, if naturalism was guided, that it was guided for YOU. It's simply arrogance on your part to assume that this grand ol' universe was created for the benefit of YOU or even humanity. As I observed before, and you blithely ignored, that if it was created for anything, it was created to contain dark matter and energy.

What do you mean by whatever the universe is embedded in? The last I heard most scientists still believe the universe (at least in its present form) began to exist 14 billion years ago. There are alternative theories with little consensus.

If there's a comprehensible "outside" for your god to exist in and create the universe, then the universe is embedded in something. It's embedded in some structure that has some form of time to it (because if it doesn't, then creation events are impossible). What form that may be, or even if there is something at all, is up for debate, but if it exists, then there are minimum requirements that it must satisfy.

That in part is why a so called supernatural or transcendent explanation is called for. In a virtual universe we can slow down or speed up time at will because the creators of virtual universes are transcendent to it.

No, you just want a god that can break the rules of logic. In the trancendent space god exists in, there must be some form of time or god would not be able to do anything. Your appeal to virtual universes does not wash. Even when the simulation of a virtual universe is slowed down, the time of the simulators is still chugging along.

As I said before, it is that time, the time that the creator exists and does things in, is the time you have to demonstrate. You have continuously failed to do so.

I've said often there is a basis for belief in naturalism in fact I made a case for it as I did for theism. That's the point if you're going to say elements of the universe that comport with naturalism are evidence in favor of naturalism then you have to acknowledge the points of evidence that don't fit that narrative favor the theist narrative. But no one here is willing and I suspect you won't be either.

You have yet to present ANY evidence that fits your theist narrative. When you presented your narrative, I pointed out the problems I found in it, but you continue to insist on that evidence fitting your narrative without addressing the points I have made. You have remained curiously silent about my observations that, in mathematics, we find deep connections between fields that we do not design into our axioms. You have no comment about why anyone should believe that the universe was designed for us when we make such a vanishingly small fraction of its products. You have failed to draw any sort of connection between any design and the stars, planets, life and sentience. It is the hallmark of a hollow notion.

I wouldn't call happenstance by itself a deal breaker, if we find this is one of a multitude of universes that would explain a great deal. If we find life that can adapt to other circumstances that would change the landscape significantly.

And what about the observation that life doesn't even rise to the level of by-product in the universe, a universe filled with structure and patterns that, if our experience with things we do design is indicative of how prevelant they are, do not need specific design to exist? You've never answered that point.

You continue to state things as fact yet I don't see how you could possibly know. How do you know what applies or doesn't to the universe as a whole? Do any set of laws apply to the universe as a whole? When did this knowledge come about?

Through the simple fact that our physical laws are forumulated in ways such that they wouldn't make sense unless they were only meant to apply within the universe. It doesn't make sense to talk about the position of the universe or its momentum as an entire object unless you have a coordinate system in some sort of time and some sort of space to construct that scenario. Are you claiming this time and space exist that the universe is embedded in? How did you come by this knowledge? Wait, you didn't. You simply insist that physical laws "could" apply to the universe without even showing that they would even have any meaning in the venue you would talk about.

Until you show that the physical laws do apply to the universe as an entire object, you haven't got a leg to stand on.

You must have the uncanny ability to ignore any and all evidence against your position. Big bang is still the dominant cosmological theory of how the universe came into existence roughly 14 billion years ago and there's a good reason for it. Several key predictions of the theory have been confirmed. It might not be the whole story but hardly speculative.

Again, you betray your ignorance of what you talk about. The Big Bang doesn't mean that the universe had a beginning in the way you think of it. It is in fact quite possible that there is no first event in time, although there is a limit event that bounds how far universal time can be extended into the past. This notion is consistent with the Big Bang theory, as the theory only takes us to the first Plank time of the universe. Even if that limit point does exist, it doesn't mean that the universe popped into existence any more than the Earth pops into existence at the North pole. (Indeed, the North pole is a quite apt analogy to what is happening at the Big Bang — there is a coordinate singularity at the North pole, just as there's a physical singularity at event 0.) Furthermore, the Big Bang theory is consistent with the notion that the universe shrinks to nearly a point and then rebounds in an infinite series of Big Bangs through eternity, again, because the theory only takes us back to the Plank time of the current expansion and no further. The final contender is the infinite inflation hypothesis, which states that the current Big Bang is only one in many that has frozen out of a more primeval state that has persisted for all of eternity, and effectively makes it a multiuniverse hypothesis.

To top this all off, the ontological nature of time that is best supported by physical theory is eternalism because it's the only ontology that is consistent with special and general relativity — presentism requires absolute simultaneity (the universal now), and special and general relativity states that simultaneity is relative. Thus, the passage of time is an illusion that only applies within the universe. Outside the universe, nothing happens. What you would see is a mess of interwoven events.

Therefore, if any notion has more foundation than the other, it's mine.

As you are insisting some form of naturalistic causes. Of course they are connected. The only life we know of depends on planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies, gravity (in an extremely narrow range) and a host of other conditions mentioned by Martin Rees.

You have failed to connect them with a purposeful design, sugarpuff. LOTS of phenomena in the universe depend on those same constants and conditions. Why is any one of them indicative of design?

You made an unequivocal statement that life would occur where ever there are favorable conditions as if you knew what those conditions were. I think you have a difficult time distinguishing between opinion, fact, theory, hypothesis or hyperbole.

It's not me that has said that, it's the scientists you disparage even though they have made the study of the chemistry of early life their life's work. The simple fact is that the raw materials of life are readily formed according to the chemistry, even in venues as hostile as outer space. The simple fact is that life did form on Earth almost as soon as the crust formed and the oceans precipitated out. The simple fact is that a lot of chemical pathways to produce the basic units of life have been mapped out and have been known for decades. The simple fact is that there are several major contenders for the theory of abiogenesis and your "designed by God" hypothesis is NOT among them.

Well, that's not strictly true -- although it's not completely demonstrated yet. There is evidence in the CMB of You are not allowed to view links.
Register or Login, for example, and a separate universe is about as 'beyond our observational bubble' as you could ask for. Even granting that this is not conclusive, we cannot rule out observable consequences of external events.

And you're not beginning with a logical starting point, you're starting with the conclusion you want and building a superstructure around it. All you're saying is, "We can't observe what happened before the Big Bang, so it could have been anything, so my idea is plausible."

And it's just not. It's "here there be dragons" writ large. We don't know what exists before or outside our universe -- or even if there is a 'before' or 'outside' -- and you're just projecting your own philosophy onto those areas and then hiding behind a near-complete lack of real data.

Having a near total lack of experimental evidence ... is where all theoretical physics dies ... not starts. This is why a lot of the theoretical physics of the last 30 years has been unproductive, compared to the 30 years before that. There has only been one major experimental result since 1983 that has been even marginally important ... the equivocal and so called Higgs boson of 2014. The physics before say 1987 was full of experimental results. Since then theory has led experiment ... badly. Most of cosmology and astrophysics are not experimental science .. the LHC is.

OK, but you aren't the only read of this thread ;-) I often comment on the thread as a whole, as context to a specific response to a specific question. I assume that you agree, in the normal sense, that agency makes sense for people. And we both agree that agency doesn't make sense for inanimate matter/energy or space/time. In so far as we look at things materialistically (mass/energy + space/time) there is no agency. Humanistically ... it does. But reconciling those two, is where people usually differ.

Ananta Shesha you said that God the beginning of the universe was an infinite, formless, unified state of matter. So when this cavitation occurs how can there be more than one bubble. Or are you saying that cavitation can cause an infinite number of standing waves? I'm tryin to put your definition of god, and your super cavitation and multiverse altogether. I haven't ever heard your definition of god or this particular model of the universe before.

The initial cavitating wavefront is perfectly flat and contractile. Flat because in an absolute infinite substance there is no higher or lower degree of excitation. Even though there be massive amounts of energy contained in the quark matter, it is energetically flat/ neutral with itself. The cavitated spheres are contractile quanta that appear in the horizontal gap. The inverse of infinitely spatial, finite in number...is infinite in number and spatially finite. That would be a metaversal plain of infinite number of spheres and they are eachl a self contained "one", a quantum holon, a universe, an image of God.

The contractile plain keeps traveling in one direction leaving metaversal plains in its wake. That is the temporal expression of infinite space....it will travel infinitely in time in a never ending procreative process. It is a self expression of a self exstant infinite and there is not a thing to stop it.

If I had to science it up I'd call it a quantum Newtonian cascade by relativistic contraction. Cascade because there are several further tiers of shaping forces that unfold inside each universe and these further divided a universe into separate spatial region such as an antimatter top half and matter bottom half.....6 regions total.

The idea of an infinite absolute pre-universal substance is an old idea. But the ancients usually didn't refer to it as God they usually refer to it as what the God arrose out of.

Which creation ... the universal one? As far as here and now, some things require agency (creation implies instrumental cause). You can project backward from that .. and say that agency is always required (for some things). What Drew can't admit is that ... not everything requires agency (when mud slides down a hill, that doesn't require agency ... gravity does it, not the mud god), that universal creation (if that is even a thing) might be a thing that doesn't require agency (make a universe (not a simulation) and let us see if agency is required). Agency could come about ... after universal "creation". Based on my understanding .. agency did come about after universal "creation" ... which shouldn't be called "creation" at all, because it didn't require agency. Naturalism was opposed to animism (of paganism) before it was opposed to monotheism. /

You know I was just thinking the other day and I hate to admit this but not everything requires a direct agency. Its not like creators of automobiles have to be inside the car whenever it runs. Soon not even a driver will have to be in the car.

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Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.Albert Einstein

for some reason your description of infinitely packed spheres reminds me of the hall of memories in Harry Potter (all those racks of glass balls).

Each sphere contains the image of the one? That sounds like a hologram. After you cut a hologram you have two identical pictures (I wonder how many times a hologram can be divided before it looses integrity)

You said the wave started by the one would keep going forever... Could the one choose to stop the wave? or stop the subdivision?

Course the whole concept is getting a little heavy for this thread. Some people might enjoy the math if you were to make a thread in the science section.

Baruch - I don't know is always a good answer... I don't hang my hat on the creation of the universevery sensible. knowing doesn't make a bit of difference. Even if it turns out the universe hatched from an egg. Doesn't pay the bills and doesn't keep me awake at night.

What do you mean by whatever the universe is embedded in? The last I heard most scientists still believe the universe (at least in its present form) began to exist 14 billion years ago. There are alternative theories with little consensus.

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If there's a comprehensible "outside" for your god to exist in and create the universe, then the universe is embedded in something. It's embedded in some structure that has some form of time to it (because if it doesn't, then creation events are impossible). What form that may be, or even if there is something at all, is up for debate, but if it exists, then there are minimum requirements that it must satisfy.

I see you continue to make statements not based on any fact or evidence but simply based on whatever your mortal mind imagines is true because it sounds logical to you. You also limit any possible explanation to the constraints imposed upon time space and the laws of physics we are familiar with. It boggles my mind how you can say that if something you're not even sure exists but if it does then there are minimum requirements its must satisfy...according to who you?

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No, you just want a god that can break the rules of logic. In the trancendent space god exists in, there must be some form of time or god would not be able to do anything. Your appeal to virtual universes does not wash. Even when the simulation of a virtual universe is slowed down, the time of the simulators is still chugging along.

What rules of logic? What expectation do we have that unguided naturalistic forces are confined to rules of logic or if a transcendent God exists God also would have to follow rules of logic. Do scientists who program virtual universes have to follow rules of logic? Being transcendent to the virtual universe they could apply chaotic rules that make no sense at all.

There is also precious little logic to your posts. No matter what I respond to you deny it the next post. You state everything as some incontrovertible fact whether it really is a fact or just whatever you imagine to be a good idea in your head that you think is fact.

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Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.Albert Einstein

You know I was just thinking the other day and I hate to admit this but not everything requires a direct agency. Its not like creators of automobiles have to be inside the car whenever it runs. Soon not even a driver will have to be in the car.

The human is always there, hidden. In the past (making the car at some point ... machines are used to make machines, but they don't breed) or in the present (the programmer who programs the subway (guided transportation). Don't be fooled by the man behind the curtain. And there will be people in your autonomous car, just not driving ... just screaming as they make a wrong turn on the Apple map ;-(